THE debate over the Alternative Vote system, which will be a key part of local election ballot papers on May 5, went up a notch in Saffron Walden today.

Conservative party co-chairman and often BBC Question Time panellist Baroness Warsi made an appearance in the town centre today (March 31).

She gave her views to a BBC camera crew before speaking to members of the public and regional press and then handed out information.

The Alternate Voting system has been proposed by the Lib Dem side of the collation Government and allows voters to allocate their choices to a first, second, third, fourth and fifth choice.

If one candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote they are declared the winner. If no candidate achieves this, the candidate with the lowest number of first choice votes is eliminated and their votes are given to whoever they voted for as their second choice.

That process continues until a winner is declared with over half of all the votes.

The other half of the coalition Government, the Conservative Party, are opposed to the method. The Labour Party is officially backing the AV process, but some Labour MPs have said they will vote no.

The current ‘first past the post’ system means that every vote is counted once and the person with the most votes wins.